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Farewell to Manzanar Paperback – December 12, 2023

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,454 ratings
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Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston recalls her childhood at a Japanese incarceration camp in this engrossing memoir that has become a staple of curriculum in schools and on campuses across the country. This special 50th-anniversary edition features a new cover, a foreword by New York Times bestselling and acclaimed author Traci Chee, and photographs of life at the camp by Toyo Miyatake.

During World War II the incarceration camp called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California, east of the Sierras. Its purpose? To house thousands of Japanese Americans.

In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston recalls life at Manzanar through the eyes of the child she was and the experiences of her family. She relays the mundane and remarkable details of daily life during an extraordinary period of American history: The wartime imprisonment of civilians, most native-born Americans, in their own country, without trial, and by their fellow Americans.

She tells of her fear, confusion, and bewilderment as well as the dignity and resourcefulness of people in oppressive and demeaning circumstances. Jeanne delivers a powerful first-person account that reveals her search for the meaning of Manzanar.

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Previous page
  1. Reading age
    7 - 12 years, from customers
  2. Print length
    224 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Grade level
    3 - 7
  5. Lexile measure
    1040L
  6. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches
  7. Publisher
    Clarion Books
  8. Publication date
    December 12, 2023
  9. ISBN-10
    1328742113
  10. ISBN-13
    978-1328742117
  11. See all details
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From the Publisher

A SPECIAL 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A poignant memoir from a Japanese American. . . . Told without bitterness, her story reflects the triumph of the human spirit during an extraordinary episode in American history." — Library Journal

"[Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston] describes vividly the life in the camp and the humiliations suffered by the detainees... A sober and moving personal account." — Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston was born in Inglewood, California, in 1934. She studied sociology and journalism at San Jose State University, where she met her husband and cowriter of her memoir Farewell to Manzanar, James D. Houston. For their teleplay for the NBC television drama based on Farewell to Manzanar, they received the prestigious Humanitas Prize. Jeanne’s widely anthologized essays and short stories were first collected in Beyond Manzanar: Views of Asian American Womanhood. Her works have earned numerous honors, including a United States-Japan Cultural Exchange Fellowship; a Rockefeller Foundation residence at Bellagio, Italy; and a 1984 Wonder Woman Award, given to women over forty who have made outstanding achievements in pursuit of truth and positive social change.
 

James D. Houston (1933–2009) was the author of several novels and nonfiction works exploring the history and cultures of the western United States and the Asia/Pacific region. His works include Snow Mountain Passage, Continental Drift, In the Ring of Fire: A Pacific Basin Journey, and The Last Paradise, which received a 1999 American Book Award for fiction. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Jim received a National Endowment for the Arts writing grant, a Library of Congress Story Award, and traveled to Asia lecturing for the U.S.I.S. Arts America program.
 

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Clarion Books; Reprint edition (December 12, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1328742113
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1328742117
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 7 - 12 years, from customers
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1040L
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 3 - 7
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,454 ratings

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  1. James D. Houston

    James D. Houston

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
2,454 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lois
5.0 out of 5 stars Book
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2024
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I’ve found this book to be very informative and interesting.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A great story for anyone
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2015
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Farewell to Manzanar is probably one of the best nonfiction book I have read in terms of the way the story is written. In it, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, an American- Japanese girl, is sent to a Manzanar, a camp for Japanese in the U.S. during WWII, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, unlike in other non-fiction books about people’s hardships, the author keeps the tone light in an otherwise dark situation. For example, “I couldn’t help laughing at Mama Walking around in army earmuffs and a pair of wide-cuffed, khaki-colored wool trousers several sizes too big for her,” wrote the author. Even though the situation was that there wasn’t much clothes at that time and they weren’t that great for warmth, the story is constructed with humor instead of simply just showing how bad things were. That doesn’t mean the book had no dark moments. In it however, these moments weren’t often drained on and at many times, were unexpected. For example from the book can be, “Not until after Papa died and we began to come together, trying to fill the vacuum his passing left in all our lives.” While it was stated in sad mood, the author didn’t drag it on and instead, she continued on the story like the statement was not even made.

However, Farewell to Manzanar is far from having any flaws. One of them was that at certain parts in the book, the author would mention something that happened much later in the story. An example from the book can be, “Later on, sewing machines were shipped in, and one barrack was turned into a clothing factory.” This and other statements couldn’t have been used when the book was on that time of the story. However, this is not the case for most of these statements, so they instead spoil certain events that would come much later like Papa’s death. However, even with this flaws, the book is still an excellent to read for its great characters, storyline, situations, and tone. It is especially wonderful for anyone who is interested in the lives of American- Japanese people living in America during WWII. Those being said, don’t expect a book detailing what all these people dealt with during that time. This is a book about one person’s experience during that time. So, if you want a good story on a depressing situation, this is the book for you.
3 people found this helpful
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Jill Clardy
4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Beautifully Written Memoir
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2014
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The WWII Japanese Internment camps represent a sad, embarrassing chapter in American history, which is probably why I never read about it during my time in school. Over 110,000 Japanese people were forcibly sent to 1 of 10 camps throughout the West. The majority of the internees were actually U.S. citizens, some 2nd or 3rd generation. The author was only 7 when her family was bused from Los Angeles to Manzanar in a remote corner of the Eastern Sierra between Mt. Whitney and Death Valley. The camp wasn't even completed yet when the first internees arrived. Families were assigned half of a flimsy barracks building with no walls for privacy. They ate communal meals and used communal toilets.

The climate was hostile, with heavy winds howling down off of the mountains kicking up dust constantly. The cold winter weather penetrated the thin tar-papered walls of the barracks buildings. In spite of the remote, hostile environment, the inhabitants worked to make their temporary home more comfortable, by decorating and building partitions. They cultivated vegetable gardens and harvested fruit from the orchards. Kids went to school; babies were conceived and born at the camp. In short, life went on. However, the camp life lead to an inevitable deterioration in the family structure. Meals were communal rather than family events, and parents had no way of providing for their families in the traditional method. Jeanne's father had a very difficult time in camp, and deteriorated into alcoholism. As she wrote in the book though her life started in camp, her father's life ended there. He never recovered his fishing business or his sense of self worth.

The book provides an insightful glimpse into the daily life in the camps as well as the emotional and economic toll extracted from the inhabitants. They lost their businesses, their homes, their way of life and their dignity. In a sad commentary on the personal havoc wreaked by the camps, the author noted that the last to leave were the elderly people; they had nothing to return to, and no energy or confidence to go back into their old communities and rebuild so they hung onto camp life until forced to leave.

I had the opportunity to visit the desolate, remote Manzanar camp in 2012. Only a couple of barracks are left, but there is an excellent visitor center that faithfully recreates what it must have been to live there. You can drive around the roads and see how large the camp was. The magnificent mountain range looms large on the horizon, with tantalizing beauty and freedom, which was denied to those inside the barbed wire fences.

Farewell to Manzanar is a beautifully written important memoir since there is so little written about that time. Pay no attention to the number of 1 and 2-star reviews. It appears that most of those are written by school age children who were forced to read the book and do a review, and probably didn't appreciate the cultural significance of the internment camps.
64 people found this helpful
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Kevin Eyer
5.0 out of 5 stars Written for the 13 Year Old
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2023
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To even grasp that the book is about anything more significant than a little girl's sort of pleasant odyssey, you have to understand a lot more about the historic events involved. This book is not about that. It all comes across as a sort of camp out, in which, whether you make the Camp Cheer Squad is the most important thing (and for her, I suppose it was). But, if you want to read about Japanese internment, in a serious way, this isn't it. At all.
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Bettye Hull
5.0 out of 5 stars A very.personal history
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2022
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Everyone should read this book. We all need to be aware of our nation's history. Humans have a propensity to go to extremes when fearful, but we must summons our better nature and not mistreat our fellow humans! This book delves into the life experiences of a young girl before, during, and after internment. We should all imagine ourselves in such circumstances. The narrative also gives the reader a glimpse into the Japanese culture and how that affected the family's experiences both in and out of the internment. This is a lesson in The Golden Rule....never to be forgotten.
2 people found this helpful
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Tomi E.
5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-wrenching but Entertaining
Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2019
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I had known about this book for years but had never gotten around to reading it. It’s beautifully written and brutally honest about her father’s alcoholism, made worse by the internment. I was also interned but in Topaz, Utah, as a U.S. citizen, from age 1-1/2 to almost 5 years old, so my perspective was obviously quite different although I do remember the dust and desert vividly. I highly recommend this book; I couldn’t put it down and read it in one sitting. It’s entertaining and especially timely with regards to the current immigration problem and the contentious way our government is handling the situation.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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ara
5.0 out of 5 stars Don't miss this book
Reviewed in Japan on April 9, 2024
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I found the straightforward reality. This is a very good book.
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無論
3.0 out of 5 stars 新たな認識
Reviewed in Japan on December 1, 2013
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最近アジアもきな臭い。海外で活躍する日系の助けも必要だとの記事も散見されるようになった。
日本を出たことがない私が、たまたま出会った本であるが、彼らの助けを得るためには日本にいる我々もより一層襟をただして行く事が大事だと認識した。出なければ、海外の方々の生活も壊れるのだから。
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Fred
1.0 out of 5 stars it was honestly different story than that its tite, ...
Reviewed in Canada on November 17, 2015
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it was honestly different story than that its tite, it was a life story of a very ordinary family, who stayed in camp for 4 years. it wad nothing historically attractive to learn. in general it was a memoir of apoerson who remember nothing for the time she stayed Manzanar. title of the book confuses about its content, but there is really nothing to read, most of the book is about the type.and colour of the cloths they wore, i dont revommend it if you are looking for a histotical book.....
One person found this helpful
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